Rays Of Hope For Labor

After Being Pushed To The Ropes, Union Movement Appears To Be Back In Fight

June 20, 1995|By R.C. Longworth, Tribune Staff Writer.

That rustling noise over there on the left, nearly drowned out by the hosannas of the resurgent right, just might be the sound of the American labor movement awakening from its coma.

On paper, unions in this country appear to be on the ropes. They represent barely 15 percent of workers-some statistics say it's only 11 percent-down from 33 percent in the late 1950s. The old heavy industries-steel, cars, mining-that were the bastion of Big Labor employ a shrunken shadow of their old work force. Most labor-backed candidates in the 1994 elections, national and local, got whipped. Labor laws have been greatly weakened in recent years while anti-union employers, backed by union-busting consultants, have become stronger.

So it's hard to find rays of light. But they're there:

- Union membership actually has grown, if slightly, over the last two years. The total work force has grown faster, so labor's share keeps sliding.

- A few unions are thriving, mostly by zeroing in on women, minorities and lesser-skilled workers or on industries, like nursing homes, whose jobs can't be moved out of state or overseas. The Service Employees International Union nearly doubled in size in the last 15 years, to more than 1.1 million members from 625,000.

- The stately reign of AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland is ending with his retirement following a bitter feud among union leaders. The AFL-CIO elects a new president in October. John Sweeney, the Service Employees president who presided over his union's growth with careful strategy and feisty tactics and who pushed for Kirkland's resignation, claims to have the winning votes.

- Some members of labor's old coalition, including liberal Democrats, either have problems of their own or seem to have lost interest. But others-civil rights groups, churches, women's groups-are still there, and are getting new encouragement from unions eager for all the allies it can get. More than 2,000 supporters turned out here last Saturday for a Jobs With Justice rally, one of a series held around the nation to protest the Republican Party's Contract with America.

Actually, since many workers believe this is one of the worst of times for workers, it could be argued that this should be one of the best of times for unions. Heavy industry continues to disappear. Downsizing has left blue-collar and white-collar workers insecure. Recent statistics show the gap between the rich and poor is growing: In the middle, the purchasing power of American workers has been sliding for 20 years.

Unions traditionally exist to win better wages and provide job security. And with wages down and insecurity high, you might expect unions to grow.

In fact, a poll last year by two professors, Richard Freeman of Harvard and Joel Rogers of the University of Wisconsin, showed that 40 percent of all workers want to be in unions, triple those who belong now.

Why, then, are unions so weak? According to many experts, the fault lies partly with unions and partly with the times.

Competition from Third World nations, plus government deregulation of industries like airlines, "hit the industries where the unions were concentrated," said Richard Hurd, director of labor studies at Cornell University. Technological change in heavy industries added to this pressure.

"Unions have been in the wrong place at the wrong time," Hurd said.

"Add to this aggressive employers and a Washington that is quite hostile to labor," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Like Shaiken, many experts believe President Clinton, who won with help from organized labor, has given only lip service to labor interests.

Chicago labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan said the problem lies with shifts in the American economy.

"There's still a lot of big employers," Geoghegan said, "but they're much more decentralized. Capital is a lot more mobile. It's tough to go out and organize 150 people (in a small subsidiary)."

This process began 30 years ago and labor responded by "circling the wagons, rather than reaching out or emphasizing organizing," Shaiken said.

After 30 years of dodging blows, "labor gives off a sense of weakness," Geoghegan said. "For a long time, business was willing to accept labor-and then it realized it didn't have to."

Current job insecurity is more likely to create fear, not a boom in union membership, the experts said.

"Job insecurity doesn't lead to unionization, because workers are too insecure to organize," said Greg Tarpinian, executive director of Labor Research Associates in New York. In the '30s, he said, true union growth didn't happen until the last half of the decade, as the Depression began to lift.

Years of union defensiveness, not to mention corruption in many unions, have damaged labor's image. But there are signs of a recovery.

Labor has had little luck in organizing white-collar and professional workers, apart from government employees. But it is winning elections in lower-wage, lower-skill industries, or among women and minorities.

The Service Employees, the fastest-growing union in the nation, has organized heavily among health-service workers and janitors.

Most pro-union experts call for a more aggressive approach by unions.

"You can do a great deal just by waking people up, by saying here's what the problem is, by saying your life doesn't have to be like this," Geoghegan said.